This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by MENDELSON, M. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                   What's this?

A Dialogical Model for Business Correspondence

Iowa State University

Despite the fact that letters and memos are the most prevalent forms of written discourse in the business community, there has been little theoretical study of professional correspondence as a distinct rhetorical genre. A theory of correspondence as a form of dialogue can, however, be constructed with the help of two very different scholars, Erasmus and Bakhtin. Erasmus, the Renaissance humanist, offers a pragmatic guide to the practice of dialogue in correspondence, and Bakhtin, the twentieth-century Russian philosopher of language, provides theoretical concepts that define the nature of dialogical communication. The present article combines the ideas of both scholars into a unified theory of business correspondence and then presents both a set of guidelines and a model for the practice of dialogical correspondence.

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?

This article has been cited by other articles:

				J. Palmeri When Discourses Collide: A Case Study of Interprofessional Collaborative Writing in a Medically Oriented Law Firm Journal of Business Communication, January 1, 2004; 41(1): 37 - 65. [Abstract] [PDF]